The disgraceful RCN and Nurse Jennifer Melle

[ArabellaScott]

The Darlington Nurses Union has now formally intervened to ask the RCN to step up and do its actual job:

'Suspended nurse Jennifer Melle says her gender row with the NHS has left her abandoned, vulnerable and alone.
The medic claims she has been cast into the wilderness and feeling like a pariah over her unshakable and religiously-held beliefs on biological sex.
She has been suspended from work for four months for breaching patient confidentiality after “misgendering” a convicted sex offender.
Single mum Ms Melle, 40, now faces being struck off but says the silence from those with a duty of care towards her has left her broken. '
...
'Ms Melle was hauled before a disciplinary hearing after an incident in May last year during which she refused to use female pronouns for a patient under her care.
She remains unable to work after Patient X, who was born male but identifies as a woman, was taken to St Helier Hospital in Carshalton, Surrey, from a male prison for treatment for a urinary condition.
Ms Melle was called a n*** multiple times after the inmate overheard her using biologically accurate pronouns during a phone call with a senior doctor.
She was suspended by the trust on April 2 for breaching patient confidentiality after speaking about the racial abuse and referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.'

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2090368/gender-biological-sex-trans-NHS-nurse

'A paying RCN member for 12 years, Jennifer says that when the incident happened the union dismissed her case as not “meritorious” and told her to complete a “reflection” exercise to avoid future ‘misgendering’. She received no support despite the RCN recognising the abuse she experienced.
The Darlington Nursing Union (DNU), which represents Jennifer, has now formally appealed to the RCN to intervene.'

https://christianconcern.com/ccpressreleases/christian-nurse-in-trans-paedophile-misgendering-case-says-royal-college-of-nursing-abandoned-her/

You could just as reasonably state that doctors having a humanist or atheist belief system affects their end of life care decisions. Those decisions should be made in the best interests of the patient; I don't think it's possible to ensure complete consistency, so we have guidelines, but of course people will bring their worldviews and personal experiences to bear.

No, I don't like sexism. And transgender belief - the belief that how someone thinks, feels or lives makes them a man or a woman rather than their body - is nothing more than old fashioned sexism hiding behind inclusive language.

Objectively, accepting that view of men and women diminishes us all.

But hey, if you think sexism should be welcome then great, defend it!

Or if you don't think the belief that how someone thinks, feels or lives makes them a man or a woman is sexist, or if you don't think that reduces and belittles the sexist things that women experience because of our bodies, then great, explain why not!

But until you can explain to me exactly why you think you are so right, I'm afraid I am going to continue seeing your posts as all bluster and no substance.

The article states "being very or extremely religious was also associated with significantly fewer discussions of decisions with patients around treatment at the end of life."

So it isn't about those who are atheist also being influenced - it's about patients under religious doctors being unduly so. Doctors need to keep their own viewpoints outside.

I don't agree that that's a universal definition of transgenderism for starters. Here's one "transgender person is an individual who self-defines their gender as one other than what they were assigned at birth." Gender and sex are distinct concepts.

They aren’t the opposite sex, so if they genuinely think they are, in good faith, they’re deluded. HTH.

The NHS/RCN etc are ridiculously captured, so no one is impressed by you quoting the policies they made without considering the rights and feelings of anyone else.

What is this mysterious “gender” that’s distinct from sex? Where did the concept “woman” magically spring from?

BeLemonNow, you say no one required her to become a nurse as if the requirement to use arbitrary patient-specific pronouns was always in place. Are you sure that the pronoun requirement predated her employment or training? Or are you suggesting people should just walk away from jobs after years of working and training because of changes in conditions like this?

Detriments to Nurse Melle had already occurred by the time she was suspended, if her case is well founded. You’ve practically invented a whole backstory from the sparse info available, including dismissing that there was any racist element in the treatment of Jennifer Melle by the hospital.

You are outwith the sworn testimony of Dr. Beth Upton, Trans-identifying male doctor who swore under oath that his sex is female, as well as offside with the majority of trans-identifying men.

Be careful you don’t get cancelled for transphobia by the cohort you seek to support.

Yes. Gender and sex are distinct concepts.

And if the people who believe that Gender is something more than just sexist stereotypes had picked different words to the ones we already used for sex we'd not be having this conversation at all, and all the arguments about sex amd Gender wouldn't ever have happened.

But they didn't.

They, while claiming on the one hand that gender is different to sex, nevertheless with the other grabbed right on to sex and created the unfounded and unevidenced claim that gender is not in fact different to sex but is somehow a newer better version of sex that can replace sex in society, in privacy, in language and in how we relate to and understand each other, to the degree we don't need to think about, respect or even name sex at all.

And that is why Genderism is sexist. Because in using the words that came from sex, it is claiming that there is a connection between the-idea-in-a-man's-head-that-makes-him-a-woman and people who are physically female.

And who does society giving credence tp the idea that being a "woman" is about how you think not the reality of living as a female bodied person hurt most?

Not men, because thanks to Patriarchy the world is already set up for them.

No, it affects women, because Patriarchy is not set up for us and so we need to be able to explain and understand how our experiences and needs are different to men in order to escape it.

So please, next time you blithely parrot that sex and gender are different, stop and ask yourself why, if they are different, is it so important that the language of sex - the pronouns, the names, the words Woman and female, Man and male, have to be the same?

If gender and sex are different concepts, how can ones gender align or misalign with ones sex? I wasn't assigned a gender at birth, my sex was observed, and like most people the evidence was pretty conclusive and has been confirmed by puberty. (and as it happens by parenthood). No-one is in any doubt. My gender is not something even I can pin down fully. I doubt if anyone who knows me considers me to be typically masculine in all respects, and even if they did, how would that gender be the same as what I was "assigned at birth", given that no-one assigned me anything at birth, and what was observed was not a gender but my sex?

If gender and sex are different concepts, the definition of transgender you quoted is nonsensical. If they were the same concept, that is sex is gender, then the definition of transgender you quoted would be equally nonsensical.

Isn’t it amazing that in all this “centring the patients needs, whoever they are” in the NHS, in more than one hospital women patients can be told that their cancer surgery can’t be carried out, or that as a patient who is a nurse there they must have the abusive male in the room when they have surgery, despite being a survivor of child abuse, just because they challenge these men. That a black nurse can be called the n word multiple times by an aggressive convicted paedophile and no one gives a single fuck about any of these women because they’re dancing to the tune of the abusive, manipulative men and their ridiculous charades about their “gender” and “special pronouns”.

Gender isn't assigned at birth.

Have I been transported back to. 2017 or something? It's like being on some sort of retro thread.

You’re right, it is another straw man fallacy.

Do you have a list of these fallacies that you just keep churning out? Respecting someone’s religious beliefs doesn’t involve anyone being forced to participate in a lie, you wouldn’t have to pretend that you shared their religion in order to treat them or even that you believed in God. I hate to point this out again, but the medical treatment of men and women is different, because we are not the same, the fundamental truth of this cannot be ignored in a medical setting as it could lead to poor outcomes for the patient.

As you’ve so keen on straw man fallacies, answer me this, a trans identified man goes to the hospital insisting that he’s pregnant and he believes he’s having a miscarriage, he’s presenting with severe abdominal pain, when it’s pointed out that he can’t possibly be pregnant he gets even more agitated and insists they carry out an ultrasound, how much time should the medical staff waste on this before calling in the MH team? How much affirming are they supposed to do in order to protect this man’s beliefs? How many other patients should be kept waiting while this delusional man insists they treat him as a woman because that’s how he identifies?

This insistence of yours that all beliefs are valid and should be protected is all very well in theory, but when it bumps into reality it is revealed for what it is, unworkable nonsense.

Didn’t you know that the WHOLE world has to change to accommodate these people and their identities?! We are all now required to accept absolutely everything men identifying as women tell us, and treat it as fact, with no debate, because of transphobia or some other non existent phobia or something, blah blah blah.

‘Doctors need to keep their own viewpoints outside’

You can’t even see the irony of this statement can you? Viewing yourself as transgender is exactly that, it’s just a viewpoint, because it has no basis in fact, which should surely be ‘kept outside’ of a medical setting, as assigning that viewpoint any veracity could harm the patient.

There have been cases. HCPs in the UK have had to 'perform' smears on males. I can't recall the details, but here's a recent one from France:

www.euronews.com/2023/09/15/a-cavity-is-not-a-vagina-trans-woman-refused-healthcare-in-france

I had assumed that “releasing detailed medical information about the patient” meant “using language (i.e. pronouns) that revealed the patient was male” (when anyone could see that anyway).

Here's a doctor talking about 'annihilating' and 'eradicating' the 'prejudices of gender' by using preferred pronouns.

Not sure that's how it works, mate.

https://www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/blogs/gender-pronouns-our-language-is-evolving-and-so-too-must-our-workplace-10944&nbsp

That is just insane.

But isn’t that ‘literal genocide’ or ‘erasing trans people’? 🤷‍♀️

You are saying exactly the same thing as me, you just don't realise it.

"an individual" == "someone"
"self-defines their gender" == "thinks, feels or lives"
"other than what they were assigned at birth"" == "makes them a man or a woman rather than their body"

Presumably you will not agree, so please explain what you think the difference is between

"an individual who self-defines their gender as one other than what they were assigned at birth"

and

"the belief that how someone thinks, feels or lives makes them a man or a woman rather than their body"

And more importantly, why this "gender" which isn't anything to do with sex should be given more social and legal significance than sex?

Bonus points if it occurs to you to consider what the difference is from the perspective of more people than just the one doing the self-defining.

Yes, and the appropriate analogy with the Last Rites is that the clinicians shouldn't be expected to provide or participate in them.

R.e. confidentiality, again this is what Jennifer Melle was suspended for. Obviously she has every right to a fair hearing.

But all patients have the right to medical confidentiality - even if they are the most awful person imaginable they still have that right.

Even if the patient's name is not included, if enough information is included they are identifiable that's a breach.

I'm surprised she didn't get legal advice before going to the press about a patient - or maybe she did and didn't care.